


A Long Way Home

by callmecathy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: (except really more a John Reese character study), (mutual rescues), Gen, Narrowly close to being a rescue fic, Rescues, pre-Wolf and the Cub, torture (mild brief aftermath)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmecathy/pseuds/callmecathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You came for me." Finch said, low, twenty minutes later.<br/>"Did you think I wouldn't?" Reese found he was more invested in the answer than he should have been.</p><p>(They share a brittle partnership, where "care" is a word they won't say and "thank yous" are given cautiously and tentatively received.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long Way Home

The sink was dripping.

Reese rolled out of bed, felt the harsh chill off the laminate creep up his spine; his shoes were missing, but at least he knew where his gun was, which might have been a discrepancy worth introspection if he cared to indulge. He didn't.

He shoved the curtains open instead of flicking the switch-- sullen light came through, although in truth everything in his apartment looked sullen. He checked his phone-- no number-- before shaving or showering, which was another discrepancy for another time.

Breakfast. His pantry was stocked with cans stamped with depressingly long expiration dates; he'd be dead before they spoiled, though that was relative: he might be dead before the milk or the eggs went bad. After two minutes Reese gave in and pulled the take-out boxes from the fridge. The previous night in the Library, they had materialized beside his coat four minutes before he left.

A second check of his phone: nothing. Reese dug out a wrench and crawled underneath the sink. The drip-drop echoed; staccato thud-shouts from a Kung-fu movie seeped through the wall on the left, the large string section and precise lilts of an old classic, maybe _Key Largo_ , came from his right. He had a duffel bag thrust beneath the pipes. Blunt edges jabbed at him through the cloth: his Glock and his .45 and a padded box of bullets. Three hundred thousand in cash; four cover identities; two changes of clothing. A pair of burner cells and a cellphone jammer, the latter of which because, when he had composed the emergency bag, he'd considered the possibility that one of the entities he might be running from would be Finch.

He hadn't planned on cutting corners hiding from the man responsible for a worldwide surveillance system.

But it had been awhile since he'd contemplated that scenario.

He still didn't get rid of the jammer.

Reese was thoroughly pretzeled beneath the pipes when his phone rang, and it was Finch; it was another number.

He wasn't sure which of the two qualified more as proof of normal.

                                                                                                 ~*~*~

Reese pressed close to the side of the tunnel as he moved through it. Over the months he had located only one of Finch's surveillance cameras, and he made the point of skulking in its blind spot; there were others, he was sure, but it was the principle of the matter. With Finch, it often was.

Light was slanting through the windows bare and blue-silver; it clung to the floorboards like frost. There was a book on the table, half-cracked with one page suspended. Lines of code streamed across the terminal on the monitors. A splash.

Reese drew his gun and stalked towards the latrines, thinking of being held underwater till black skated across his vision, thinking of the burn of it ice-cold in his lungs. He threw the door open.

The fluorescents were gleaming off the marble facades and stall doors and the two inches of water on the floor.

"Unless that serves as dual purpose as a wrench," Finch said impatiently, "could you please put it away?" He was sprawled awkwardly beneath the sink, back hedged against the walls. HIs fingers were wrapped around a piece of piping: J-bend, maybe.

"Yours, too?"

"Pardon?"

Reese stowed his gun. "Pipes freeze?"

"Apparently." He was rolled up to his shirtsleeves, a rousing occasion in itself; the temperature was barely-past-forty and dark patches of water plastered the cloth to his skin.

Reese stepped out and went into the adjacent room. "You're supposed to leave the water on when it drops below thirty." He said when he returned.

"As helpful as that belated tip _is_ , we have a more pressing matter." He slid from beneath the sink, gingerly levering himself to his feet.

Reese pretended not to notice the pained intake of breath or the white turning his fingers skeletal and thin as he clung to the edge of the sink.

Finch pretended he hadn't noticed Reese noticing.

When he had straightened fully, Reese handed him the towel. Finch's eyes narrowed. He glared at it, gaze flicking towards the bundle, then Reese; a few months ago, Reese would have assumed the suspicion came from _what_ Finch thought Reese would do with it. Restraint? Strangulation? He knew now it was the principle of accepting it.

"Mind the gift horse." Reese said, mildly.

Finch dried himself off as he limped into the main room.

"Her name is Lisa Hunter, thirty two, works as a bank teller at Wells Fargo. Single, no past relationships for several years, most of her family lives in Montana."

"So... probably has to do with the job."

"A reasonable assumption." Finch dropped into his chair behind the monitors, grimacing. "I think it's time you stopped hiding your cash under the mattress, Mr. Reese. Go make a deposit."

Reese started towards the hallway, stopped. There were a lot of things he pretended not to notice: Finch's leg, stiffening on cold days, the hazardous struggle up the steps. The only other facilities were a flight of stairs away. "I could fix it first."

A silence that almost sounded startled. "I didn't hire you to do the repairs." Finch blinked, like shutters closing. "Her shift starts in fourteen minutes and your commute takes nineteen."

                                                                                                             ~*~*~

Reese tapped his ear piece. "Thought you said Hunter was single." He was staked out in one of the scratchy armchairs in the bank, "waiting" for an appointment with one of the investment advisors. He'd been watching Hunter for four hours before he'd followed her out to a smoke break in the back alley. Two minutes later, an armored truck pulled in. Three minutes later, she was kissing the hopper.

"Kevin Hale." Finch said, after Reese had sent him a photo. "He works for Daly's Security Company. I hacked into their website-- their vehicles may be secure, but their firewalls could use some improvement-- and the deliveries Hale is involved in are cash-transit-only."

"And his involvement with Hunter?"

"It's odd. Nothing I've found seems to indicate any relationship. So either... this is entirely new, or she's been keeping it secret. Which begs the question as to what she's hiding."

"Maybe nothing, Finch. She could just be a really private person."

"Yes," He said dryly, "I can tell from her Facebook page."

Reese left the bank, crossing the street towards his car. "He's leaving. I planted a camera near the tellers. You'll be able to keep an eye on her while I follow Hale."

Hale drove to the outskirts of the city, a ravaged block of crumbling brick and snow-covered weeds and grime-streaked windows. The warehouse was worse: roof caving beneath the weight of the snow, ambiguous splotches across the siding, skinned under its peeling paint and a door that had taken a few too many sound kicks.

Reese watched Hale go in, go out. After he had driven off Reese entered.

Dark, smell of glue and soap and ink. Whirring noise, like machinery, slipperiness of fresh paper on the floor. Even before Reese's eyes adjusted to the dimness, he understood.  "Finch,"  he murmured, moving slowly. "Hale's counterfeiting the money. He must be running the operation with Hunter. He brings in the cases, she replaces the counterfeit with the real stuff." His feet stuck to the floor, crunched over plastic: an abandoned candy factory, then, old taffy and empty wrappers.

He wound around  of printers situated across long factory tables. A bag of shredded paper, nudging his foot: one loose bill, a twenty, still smelling of fresh ink. "Looks like they've cleared out. Maybe Hunter is planning on killing her partner to keep his share of the cut." His breath fanned out in front of him. "Or to keep him from talking."

"Or maybe Hale is planning on killing her."

Reese smelled gasoline. "Hold on. I--" He heard the footstep. And the sound of something cutting the air.

After that, blackness.

                                                                                                ~*~*~

Choking. His eyes shot open and he threw a fist forward, thinking of vice-like grips and hands tightening around his larynx. He hit air.

The fire surged along the rafters, flickered across the walls and plowed over one of the tables. Smell of gasoline, smell of burning glue and singed candy. He rolled over, coughing up smoke clutching at his lungs.

An inescapable heat pressing against his skin. Orange-red glow and a dull-rushing roar, and he had done this before, not so long ago: Kara Stanton and an explosion that burned through the glittery-veneer of too many lies.

He pushed himself  up, swaying. Blood was leaking into his eyes, ran hot down the back of his neck-- earned from a two-by-four, apparently, there was a sliver above his left ear and splintered plywood at his feet.

Hale. Hale must have doubled back, forgotten something, maybe; possibly he'd known Reese had been tracking him or maybe Reese had tripped a silent alarm. Didn't really matter. Reese moved towards the door, already knowing. He hit it with the side of his shoulder.

Locked.

Something clanged from the other side, a bar. He slammed it again, listened to the rattle. Or maybe a lock around the handles. His eyes were watering off the sting of the smoke; his nose ran.

Reese struggled back the way he'd come. Had to be a second door. Loose bills, slippery underfoot, twenties and hundreds curling in on singed ends, viscid candy pulling at his shoes. He turned towards the far corner. Scorched air slammed into him thick as a wall, blistering his arm.

"Reese. Reese!" He reached towards his ear piece, automatically; the blue-tooth was gone.

"Reese!"

"Here--" He choked over the word, fought to stay upright-- grabbed at a table, searing hot. The pain kept him moving. Viscous clouds of smoke obscured his vision; he couldn't see, couldn't breathe, clung to that voice as he stumbled towards it.

"John!"

Finch reached out. Reese should have known he'd never have been strong enough to hold him up. They went down, hard, blur of motion and the fall. Ragged, gasping breaths, not his, hands twisting in the excess of his coat.

"John--" And _John, John_ was a splash of icy water, a name he only ever heard anymore when someone was dying or someone was hurt-- and he wondered when exactly his name had come to signify just that.

The smoke was collapsing in his chest, deep bellows threatening to draw him into something that would be all too easy. He put the flat of his palms against the stone and pushed himself up, the gummy surface pulling him back. He reached down and hauled Finch with him.

Cold. Bright, snow glinting off too sharp too see. Finch had apparently parked about as far away as he possibly could have and they staggered towards the car-- _"no, mine, we need to take mine,"_ Finch grated out-- under a press of eyes through curtained windows and keening sirens.

Every predator instinct of Reese's, hell, Kara's voice whispering something about liabilities, told him to move, told him to run, insistent as an itch. He forced himself to pace his steps to Finch's limp.

"Backseat," Finch panted, "oxygen tank,"-- _oxygen tank?--_ and it was tilted on the seat clumsily. Reese took hits in the backseat as they went through back alleys of towering brick, slush piled muddy and filthy in the gutters. The vehicle wobbled beneath him. The tops of Finch's shoulders were visible around the seat and they were shaking, forcing an unsteady swerve; a careless stop. Reese took the mask away. "Pull over."

"The authorities will--" Cough. "--arrive at the scene and we need to get as far--" Cough. "--away as--" A choked breath halfway out of a cough.

"Finch."

The car jolted as Finch braked against the curve. Reese passed him the mask, watched carefully as shudders racked his body. Reese leaned into the seat, hacking up a dark, black gob.

"Are you okay?" Reese managed, eventually. He wiped his mouth.

"Concern-- yourself with your own condition, Mr. Reese." He pushed back the mask and slid into traffic.

It was snowing out, muffled white and peaceful; wet-slicks streaked across the window, blurring the remainder of the world. The windshield wipers were on, a steady familiar throb.

"You-- rob an ambulance?" Reese asked.

"Hardly. When-- it comes to you, I-- try to be prepared. Should you-- ever need them-- there's an intravenous set-up and a-- defibrillator in the back-- as well."

"I'm-- touched, Finch."

"Always been-- a believer in employer-provided health insurance."

Reese could have translated that sentence; he could have analyzed it in a dozen different ways. In the end, it was a game of Russian Roulette: ticking down to one inevitable outcome.

But he shied away from the word "care". It led to the sting of half-scabbed wounds and the aftertaste of cheap liquor.

"How-- bad is your head?" Finch  asked.

"Just a bleeder." Just, and a blur-grit feel in his eyes when he blinked, an ache in his chest when he breathed-- except he couldn't remember the last time it had _not_ hurt to breathe. He coughed into the back of his hand.

"Concussion. I-- own a private clinic and they recently installed a-- Magnetic Reson--"

"I go by-- John Reese. It's the ninth of January. Eight times-- four is thirty two."

"Thirty second digit of pi?"

"Eight?" Reese guessed.

"Five. But, I think you're alright." The worn, teasing lilt in his voice was practically undetectable, but it was there: Reese prided himself on being able to identify it.

He drifted. Maybe a long time, maybe not; when the motions of the car rocking beneath him began registering, the wipers had stopped. There was a dull silence same as the quiet after the missing ear-piece; the rumble of the engine roared like fire.

 "Finch." The syllable came out in a scraped whisper.  "What's the fifty-first digit?"

"Zero."

"Hundred."

"Nine." Finch's eyes flicked into the rearview, holding his for an instant. "And I'll-- start backwards from there. Seven, six, zero..." Finch was, Reese thought, a very perceptive man, when he allowed himself to be. "....seven..."

It must have hurt his throat. He did it anyway.

"One, one..."

Reese fell asleep to the sixty-eighth digit of pi.

                                                                                                                         ~*~*~

Dimness and warmth, the soft glow of three lamps in the corners, a blue-lit screen off a laptop. Reese focused on the tap-tap noises of typing. There were few white noises that could ease him anymore-- rain made him feel as if he were drowning, wind carried old ghost names on its drafts-- but that sound: it meant solace and complacency, two dangerous things he knew better than to hedge a bet on.

Finch was perched in a chair a few feet away, right at the edge, like a skittish bird about to take flight.

Reese watched Finch from the confines of his darkness, wondering how much the man's face revealed when he thought no one was looking. They'd stood beneath the Brooklyn bridge, not too many months ago. Out of the words and the offers, Reese had picked up on only one thing as the absolute truth: the ghosts in Finch's eyes.

In the beginning, he had reminded Reese less of a person and more of the Google algorithms that sorted through emails for trigger words and key-phrases.

Not anymore.

"I know you're awake, Mr. Reese."

He shifted, throwing in a little hitching breath, as if waking. He preferred to leave at least a hint of doubt in Finch's mind. Vague memories, of a parking car and unsteady steps and the Library; they were bits, fragments: maybe he did have a concussion.

"Here." Finch said, reaching into a small cooler at his feet. He passed Reese a bowl of ice chips.

Reese's hand was bandaged; so was his arm. He stared at them as he took the bowl, trying to place the exact feeling of wrongness.

Because they were his own wounds, and he'd gotten used to dealing with them alone.

"You'll be pleased to know," Finch said, "that an anonymous tip led the police to Hale's apartment, where they discovered four million in stolen cash. They arrested him, preventing him from using the gun he had recently purchased-- presumably to kill Hunter."

Reese let the ice soothe his throat. "And Hunter?"

"Hale relayed the details of their entire operation in order to ensure a lesser sentence. They'll both get time." Finch offered him a tiny, pleased smile.

 _I love my job._ Reese wasn't sure if it was prudent to even allow himself to like this one, but he did.

Finch leaned forward, placing a cup on the bedside. "Tea. Drink it. Cures all ails."

"That's very British of you, Finch."

Finch shot him an unimpressed look.

He had spent the first few months hearing a Boston clip; the next two picking up on an Oxford drawl.

The silence hummed between them. There was nothing uncomfortable about the silence in itself-- in fact there was no such thing as _uncomfortable_ silence with Finch; it was only in the buzz of the unsaid.

Reese played with a loose thread on the blanket. "Took a risk, going into that building."

Finch looked at him sharply. "Get some rest, Mr. Reese." His eyes dropped to his laptop and he started typing furiously, cutting off the "thank you" in Reese's throat.

                                                                                                               ~*~*~

The next time he woke the darkness was complete, lights gone, suffocating. It reminded him of car trunks and cold rooms and coffins. Reese focused on the sound of a whirring laptop-- closed-- and the rhythm of Finch's breathing-- steady enough to indicate that he was sleeping.

The previous times Reese had gotten hurt, he was handed a form and shown a dotted line: sign here, confirm emotional wellness. He'd always had to find his own pen. Kara Stanton's prescribed therapy was the thrill of a hunt and the revenge of a kill. Mark Snow filled his glass with varying depths of expensive vodka, depending on how severe the trauma had been: _a few bruises? Half an inch. Torture? Half the glass._

Reese stood, silently, took a moment to get his vertigo back and padded out of the room. It was murky out, cryptic patches of light-- predawn light, if his watch was correct-- staining the pages of scattered books.

It was a strange ghost beauty, the remnants of the Library.

He went through two rooms and three closets, eventually locating an appropriate wrench and a length of pipe. Nothing was particularly difficult about fixing the leak, only the angle: which was fairly impossible without including the constraints of Finch's nigh-impossible body.

When he'd finished he wandered down the hall, the damp sleeves and the wrench weighing down his arm. He paused at the top of the stairs.

He could go back to his apartment, fix the sink while listening to _Shanghai-13_ from one side of the wall and _Cat On A Hot Tin Roof_ from the other, surrounded by sardine cans and kidney beans which would outlive him, or he could stay.

The choice was unsettlingly easy.

The first floor of the Library was in the same disarray as it had been when Reese had first seen it: skeletal bookshelves sagging to the side, papers and books flipped open and torn. A broken chandelier, upended like a dead arachnid; bank lamps, cracked and dusty; a dry bouquet of flowers in the corner; artwork ripped and ragged, drooped off the walls.

Reese started with the flowers. He used a cracked-open globe as a makeshift trash can and dropped them inside; the tattered papers went with them. Some were business statements or Library printouts advertising weekday activities and open hours. Others were children's pictures, waxy crayon drawings of innocent things: pets and families and homes.

At some point between the smack of a book hitting the ground and the scrape of moving a bookshelf upright, Reese heard that dysfunctional gait behind him.

There was a dignity in the Library's brokenness that reminded him of Finch.

"When I said to get some rest, this wasn't what I intended."

"I'm trying to find something good to read."

Finch sighed, moving further into the room. Reese heard a scuff as his foot hit a book. "Isn't there a home you have to go to?"

"Not really."

There was a weight to that silence, either a question or an answer.

Reese turned, lifted the wrench from the corner of a dented desk and waggled it. He indicated his soaked sleeves.

Finch stared at him hard, eyes pitted and voidless in the half light. Reese held himself very still: maybe to keep from revealing anything, maybe to reveal _some_ thing. With Finch, he wasn't always sure. Once again, he wondered who exactly the other man thought he was.

Finch bent, carefully, then straightened and limped towards Reese. "I recommend the _Odyssey_. Even if you've read it, it bears another look."

Reese had read it; he remembered the premise and he remembered the end. And as his fingers closed around the novel he knew what it was: two things-- an acceptance and an offer.

                                                                                                     ~*~*~

In the next hours their docket remained clear. Reese couldn't have fixed the Library in a month; he couldn't have fixed it in a year. But every reshelved book or swept-up glass was one less broken piece. Finch stayed. Rustling around somewhere out of sight, possibly because, as he'd said, he had work to do; possibly because, as Reese suspected, he hadn't wanted to return to yet another one of the safe houses that Reese had tracked him to before.

Reese abandoned the first floor after filling two bookshelves-- appearances had to be kept in the unlikely event that a city official ever dropped by-- and moved on to the next.

He hadn't seen this much of the Library before. Echoing hallways spun with dust under pink-orange light from the sunrise; there were hidden corners and back rooms and empty shelves. Metal grates from the windows, twisted improbably, splintered trim, a pile of children's stuffed animals with the stuffing eviscerated, a dead rat and fragments of picture books. _"A little to the left"_ Finch commanded, as Reese was straightening a lamp on its side, only the slats of his eyes visible through six rows of bookshelves.

Reese found one thing. Kafka's _The Metamorphosis_ , tucked beside the bookshelf adjacent to a closed door. A meagre layer of dust across the cover and two scattered fingerprints-- index and thumb, maybe-- as if someone had almost pulled it off the shelf, then stopped.

The letters _N.I._ were inscribed inside the cover.

Initials, without a name or a face to place them. Except maybe those things didn't matter, not really. What Reese fully lacked was the "why". He rattled the doorknob. Locked.

"There's nothing in there."

Reese eased his fingers off the wire in his pocket. There was a last unspoken piece in Finch's sentence, arguably the largest of all: there's nothing in there, _not anymore._

Finch's face held an unfathomable amount of sadness and silence and stillness. He slipped the book from Reese's hands and returned it to the shelf very, very gently.

 _Who are you?_ Reese might have asked, if he'd thought Finch still knew the answer. "It's your bedroom," He guessed, instead.

"It has nice furniture." Finch responded ambiguously. "A comfortable bed."

In the end, it was only another fragment from a puzzle without all the pieces. Reese wondered how many ghosts lingered in the dusty corners.

It was cold, his breath was fogging into silver, Finch's footsteps were echoing and the orange light slanting through the windows turned the closed door into an ancient mural, untouched and untouchable.

Reese recalled the hard cough of dust in his throat after his first kill, he thought of smoldering piles of teeth, of Peter Arndt's blood on his hands and Jessica's perfume as she walked away, and on days Reese didn't feel like moving forward, he thought that the dead defined them more than the living.

                                                                                                          ~*~*~

"Mr. Reese, we have a new number."

Reese set down a box filled with shards of glass and crushed lampshades and a container of pulverized crayons. Finch was shadowing the opposite end of the aisle.

"Are you up for it?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"You _always_ have a choice." Finch said coolly, and Reese tended to think that those who believed it had made their share of wrong ones. "But point taken. His name is Richard Johnson."

Johnson had gone off the grid three weeks ago, abandoned his failing business, cut contact with friends and relatives and closed up his home. Finch uncovered a credit card reported stolen by Johnson's brother two days before Johnson's disappearance, tracing the last transaction to an ATM near a convenience store.

"There are three cash-only hotels in a ten-mile radius to the ATM." Finch informed him, as Reese entered the first. Background noises of traffic and honking: Johnson had taken out a loan nine months ago and Finch had decided to investigate the loan office.

After showing Johnson's picture to the staff-- the effect a badge had on people was, if not intriguing, unsettling-- he located their mark in the second hotel: fourth floor, room 221.

"I'm in." Reese jimmied the lock. Water, pouring; the clatter of a pan. "Sounds like he's home."

 _Yes, Harold Tern, creditor._ Finch said in the background. _I'm a friend of Richard Johnson..._

The kitchen sink was running and Johnson was leaned halfway into the fridge when Reese entered the main room. "Hello, Mr. Johnson."

The milk spilled, a wide arc across the floor. "I. I don't have the money."

"Money?" A short breath, from Finch.

"I thought the business was a safe bet, it went under and I can't pay you back _right now_ but I _always_ pay what I owe." His hands flashed in front of him as he backed behind the counter.

Reese hit his ear piece. "He made a bad loan, Finch, and he's scared of the people he made it with. You need to get out of that office."

No response.

"Finch?"

"Another--" Finch's voice wobbled. "Unfortunately belated tip."

Across the line: _Where's Johnson?_

"Just-- keep him safe, Mr. Reese."

The line went dead.

                                                                                                             ~*~*~

He should have gotten Johnson to a safe house first. Instead he drove, spent forty-five minutes tearing through papers and computer files looking for the place they would have taken Finch to. Right under his training there was a raw-simmering edge of panic, a dozen things detaching into fragments. And the terror of that.

Reese was far from whole. Just whole enough to break again.

When he reached the house the two loan sharks were in front of the sink, filling a bucket of ice water with their backs turned to him. He finished them and threw himself down the stairs leading into the basement.

Dim, gritty floors that caught at the soles of his shoes and a battered fluorescent turning the walls sickly and leaking; the smell of mold, the smell of must. Finch was tied to a chair in the middle of the room.

He was in his shirtsleeves, clothes drenched and plastered to his skin, turned small and hollow. There was a bruise on his cheek; his arm was mangled.

His pale eyes were fixed on a blank point on the wall.

"Finch--" Reese knelt, hard, felt ice crunching under his knees and registered that it was _not good_ if it was too cold for even the ice to be melting. He could feel Finch shaking. "Harold," Reese said, demanding and desperate, needing him to be okay for a variety of specific reasons and far too many nonspecific ones.

Finch shuddered. He drew in a sudden ragged gasping breath that heaved his chest.

"Harold," Reese said again.

"I. I." His eyes focused on Reese. "I'm alright."

Except he wasn't. Reese thought about going upstairs and aiming higher than the kneecaps. And he wondered how the hell he had failed so impossibly at the one thing he had told himself he wouldn't do again: care.

Reese pulled a knife from his pocket and carefully levered the blade beneath the zip ties. Finch flinched when he went near his arm. The skin was bloody and bruised, deep purple patches throttling the slight limb.

"Your arm is broken." Reese said, neutrally. _In three places,_ he added mentally, less so.

"They..." Finch swallowed, fought hard to stop the shake in his voice. Couldn't. "They seemed to think pain would be a good motivator."

Reese finished with the zip ties. "It wasn't?"

Finch shot him a sharp look.

He was unwillingly impressed. Reese slid the knife into his pocket. He pulled off his jacket, draping it across Finch's shoulders as he tugged him to his feet; Finch's leg gave out. Reese took the weight, felt the trembles against his rib cage as they struggled up the stairs.  

"Not far now." Reese murmured.

"I know." Finch said, and leaned into him.

                                                                                                    ~*~*~

He hadn't been lying about the nice furniture. The closed-room door in the Library held a bed built for someone tall; there was a gold fob watch in the drawer of the bedside table. A pair of shoes, several sizes too large for Finch, neatly stacked in the closet. On the corner table, an old receipt and a scrap of paper reading _31st Street_ _Ferry Terminal, 8:00 a.m._

A sharp-hitching breath.

"Easy." Reese leaned forward, into Finch's sightline. The other man gave him a wild-eyed look, neck twisting violently in its limitations. "We're safe, Harold," and so that was what first names were: not death, not dying, but saved solely for truth-- not _Reese_ , Kara's killer, not _Finch_ , the latest in a seemingly endless line of false identities. "Someplace safe."

Finch's breathing evened from the hard, jagged pants. He started to sit up, wincing as he jostled his sling; Reese eased a hand beneath his back. Stiffening shoulders, the beginnings of a flinch, until Reese said _"it's okay",_ some of the tension bleeding out-- and if Finch believed it, then maybe Reese meant it. He helped him hedge his back against the headboard.

Reese returned to his chair beside the bed. He lifted _The Odyssey_ from where it had fallen and read while he waited.

"You came for me." Finch said, low, twenty minutes later.

"Did you think I wouldn't?" Reese found he was more invested in the answer than he should have been.

Finch's gaze caught his. So many ghosts. Or maybe Reese's were just reflecting back at him. Finch's gaze drifted, almost unwillingly, over Reese's shoulder. "I see you've once again utilized your breaking and entering skills."

Reese could have claimed that he hadn't looked. Finch never would have believed him. "You needed a comfortable bed." Reese said, mildly.

Finch wasn't angry; anger would have been easy. Instead Reese watched memories and regret cross his gaze, pain and grief, some silent replay of _should have_. Reese briefly considered whether satisfying his own curiosity was worth the agony there. Probably not. Not when he remembered the taste of _if_ on the air in New Rochelle, every glint off the windows looking like a ghost-shadow reflection of _her,_ oxygen turned cruel and sharp-edged till it sliced through his lungs.

There was a bottle of forty-year-old whiskey, Bowmore, on the corner table, three-quarters full with dust on the cork. Whoever had opened it never got the chance to finish.

Reese thought of those initials on the book outside the door. "Who was he?" Reese asked, very quietly.

Silence. He hadn't expected an answer. He let his eyes drift back to the page.

Forty-five minutes later and partway into the sentence _given me sorrows beyond all others_ Finch said, "A good man."

Then he looked at Reese, gentle but candid, saying nothing but meaning something.

A good man. The weight of those words. It was like getting caught in the tide: washing him out, pulling him in. Maybe out to that golden line at the edge of the horizon. Maybe pulling him in to the shore.

The words were either a reproach or a gift disguised as a thank you. Possibly both. Finch was not a man to do one thing when he could accomplish two.

On days when Reese didn't feel like moving forward, he thought that the dead defined them more than the living.

Today wasn't one of those days.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: In my headcanon, Nathan had outfitted himself a room in the Library for when work with the numbers ran late into the night.  
> A/N: And, because, yeah. Metaphors aside, my headcanon also informs me that Reese finds cleaning cathartic.


End file.
